The First Immortal

by Matt Elam

“Clearly, Tang was trying to take me out for assisting Miss Ray,” I shot back.

  “It may be so. But there’s no evidence to support that.”

  “Yeah? What about those thugs that we ran into at my office? They identified themselves as Tang’s men.”

  “Where are they now, Jo?” said Patricia. “Did you call the police to have them arrested?”

  I looked away.

  “I’m responsible for upholding the rule of law for the city of Little Hong Kong.”

  I snorted. What a fucking joke.

  “I can’t just play favorites and bend the rules for every friend that comes through the door.

  “Yeah, well, the LHKPD and the DA’s office has been doing that for years,” I spat.

  “That’s not me,” said Patricia. “And you know it.”

  “That’s all of you bastards. This whole system is corrupt.”

  Patricia sighed. The air in the room grew tense.

  “Detective Jinx, can you and Miss Ray give me and Mr. Jo a moment, please?”

  “Yup,” said Jinx, rising to his feet. “C’mon, Miss Ray. Let’s go grab a coffee down in the kitchen.”

  Bai stood. “I want to apologize for any trouble that’s occurred on my behalf.”

  “It’s not your fault, Bai,” I said.

  “Thank you, Miss Ray,” said Patricia.

  Donald closed the door behind them and it was now just the two of us in her office. She had gotten up and moved to the front of her desk, sat on the edge, and crossed her arms.

  With that stern look on her face, set from a towering position, she reminded me of my second grade teacher, Mrs. Meyer. A hot version of her, anyway.

  “I thought she was a client?”

  “She is.” I said.

  “Then why are you calling her by her first name, Johnny?”

  “She asked me too.”

  Patricia rolled her eyes.

  “Look,” I said, “I’m not trying to jam you up. I don’t really have anywhere else to put Ba- Miss Ray. I was just hoping you could help.”

  “And I want to help. I do. But I have to work within the letter of the law. You see the political landscape changing, don’t you?”

  I stopped listening after she started her letter of the law spiel. My thoughts wandered to chi sao. Sticky hands. And pork dumplings, for some odd reason.

  Patricia knew me all too well. Her eyes narrowed. “Are you even listening to me?”

  I leaned back in my seat. “Why are you so jealous?” I said, matter-of-factly.

  Her jaw dropped.

  “What?” she spat. She uncrossed her arms.

  “You shouldn’t let your personal feelings get in the way of your ability to do your job, Patricia.” I was just being an asshole now.

  “You are a s-p-o-i-l-e-d, egotistical, insufferable -” she stuttered for more words. Her eyes were wide now.

  “Man whore?” I offered.

  She nodded, but still nothing coherent was coming out. “Jerk,” she finally managed.

  I was too irritated with Patti to look at her. I really felt like if it had been some eighty year-old woman or a dude, she would have been able to pull a few strings and secure a safe place for a couple days.

  It’s not like I’m asking for a security detail or shit like that. Jesus.

  I stood up while she was in mid-lecture. “I’ve got to get going, DA Sawyer.”

  “Johnny,”she said, firmly. “You’re not listening to me. If you can bring one of those two guys in who you said assaulted you and Miss Ray, then I might be -”

  “Appreciate it, District Attorney,” I said coldly.

  Before she could reply, the door flung open and Donald came storming into the room.

  “What is it?” Patti and I asked in unison, almost as if we were identical twins.

  “The forensics evidence for the Eisenhower Street shootings has been stolen,” said Jinx. “And I think I know who took it,” he said, with a hint of venom in his voice.

  Thirteen

  I TOOK BAI TO the only place in LHK where I knew she stood a chance. Kowloon City, which was protected by the Red Lotus, created by my Sifu, Cheung Shum Wah. I had known Cheung Sifu since my earliest memories as a child. He seemed to always be there.

  We pulled up to a covered parking garage on the edge of town. A holograph of a young attractive Chinese woman appeared between my driver’s side window and the metal machine to our left.

  “State your name, sir,” said the image.

  “Johnny Jo.”

  It prompted me to look into the blue flashing dots roughly at my eye level. I focused in, and in less than eight seconds, the two iron gates opened and we were through the first round of security. The second round would be human. Two armed guards and a cashier. Kowloon City may have been excluded from the rest of Little Hong Kong, but hey, they still had to make a living, so I didn’t mind paying a moderate fee.

  I looked at Bai and smiled. “Two more checkpoints and we’ll be there.”

  “Oh my gosh,” she said, tripping out at the whole process.

  I pulled into stall forty-seven, my personal stall since I got my driver’s permit at fifteen. I turned the car off and sat there for a beat.

  “Listen. Kowloon City is like nothing you’ve ever seen before.” I let that set in. “And my Sifu, well, to say that he’s an enigma, is a gross understatement.”

  “How so?” said Bai, curiosity spreading across her flawless face.

  I spared her the details of how the city came to be. The fact that Red Lotus was one quarter kung fu style, one quarter Triad, one quarter political system, and a quarter religion or philosophy, if you will, was not a secret, per se, but not too many locals talked about it. Come to think of it, not many in LHK spoke of Red Lotus much, either, as if simply thinking the name would get your ass whipped up and down the streets of LHK by a force you couldn’t see. And at the center of that spectacularly frightening mystery, beauty, and power, was Cheung Sifu.

  “Leeets just say the town is eccentric like the man, and vice versa,” I said.

  “Is this my second lesson, Grasshopper?” she said, with mock poutiness.

  I laughed. “No. And you’re Grasshopper, not me.”

  We strolled through market square, so I could give Bai a lay of the land. Plus, I wanted her to window shop a bit because we needed to get her into some fresh clothing, pick up toiletries, et cetera. Going back to her place would not be an option from here on out.

  “I can’t believe how clean this city is,” she marveled, as we left the square and headed into a wide alley. “I mean,” she looked around, “there’s no trash on the ground, no graffiti…” she said, scanning another section of buildings. “It’s just gorgeous.”

  “Yup. One’s property is a reflection of his or her character,” I said.

  She wrapped her arm around mine as her head bobbled around like the dolls that were so popular back in the day.

  As we approached a hardwood bridge, it appeared to be guarded by two dazzling jade dragons, one on each side of its entrance. As we made our way over the oak beams, Bai’s eyes widened when she caught a glimpse of it. She tugged at my arm, pulling us both off the steps of the bridge and onto a section of land. There it stood in all of its glory.

  “Guan Yin!” she exclaimed.

  “Very good,” I said, impressed. The goddess of mercy statue was made with red crystal and stood roughly eight feet tall. As Bai took in every inch of the work of art, I watched her and thought:

  I don’t want to fail you. I hope we can find your friend. I also wondered what she could have possibly seen in a scumbag like Benny Tang.

  When we walked through the doors of the Hong Lin Faa - Red Lotus - training hall, I spotted Cheung Sifu in the right corner, sitting down at a dining table, reading a newspaper as he usually did.

  I mean, who read physical newspapers any more? Printing presses didn’t even exist nowadays. Sifu kept one going with full-time salaried journalists and administrators ju
st to get his daily fix. Nothing was spared. It had everything from the local news to stocks to sports to the Sunday funnies.

  Pretty gangster, if you ask me.

  We approached the floating inked pages with fingers on the sides. I cleared my throat.

  “Hey, Cheung Sifu,” I said.

  The paper snapped downward, and a lean muscular Asian man with defined facial features, and just a touch of silver mixed in with his black hair stared back at us.

  I smiled. I wasn’t really sure how old Sifu was at this point, but the man looked in his mid-fifties, and I know he was much older than that.

  He said nothing, just nodded.

  “This is Miss Bai Ray, I said.

  Cheung studied her face. “What happened to you when you were nineteen?” he said, in his accented English.

  Bai’s jaw dropped wide open.

  Fourteen

  BAI FUMBLED FOR WORDS. Sifu’s question had clearly caught her by complete surprise. I was going to tell her that face reading was a rare skill that ran at least six generations deep in Cheung Sifu’s family. But I decided against it.

  “He reads faces,” I said, simply.

  “I…uh…I…lost someone very close to me at nineteen,” she managed. Her lips began to tremble.

  Sifu just grunted.

  “And I see you are of mixed race. Which parent is Asian and which is European?” inquired Sifu.

  Bai managed a smile. “My father is Western European and my mother is Asian,” said Bai, relieved that Sifu had changed the subject.

  “I see,” said Sifu, evenly. He took a sip of his hot tea. “Your mother is Chinese, then.”

  Bai nodded quickly. She looked at me. “This man is good.”

  I pulled a chair out for her and sat her across from Sifu. He called for the server to bring out another tea-cup and plate for his new guest. There was a hot plate of pork dumplings sitting at the middle of the table. I reached out to snag one, but like human lightning, Cheung Sifu slapped my hand away.

  “You go train,” he said, bringing the paper up to his face once again.

  “I guess I’m going to go train,” I said, looking at Bai. I took my leather jacket off and hung it on the back of her seat. I had on dark jeans, black suede work boots, and a tight white t-shirt, which was more than comfortable for me to train in. I didn’t need to wear a gi or sweats to feel psychologically prepared for combat.

  I made my way to the polished tobacco maple floor -twenty feet away - at the center of the hall. Only a small portion of the facility was for dining. The rest of the facility was for training Hong Lin Faa. Several wooden dummies lined the back wall. There were a half dozen training bags of different sizes and shapes in the east corner, and a rack of various kung fu weapons in the far west corner. There must have been thirty or so guys practicing tonight, and another five senior instructors.

  I swung my arms lightly forward and backward to warm up. This was the first time Bai had seen me without a jacket or blazer on. From the look on her face, she approved of what she saw.

  I stood tall with feet roughly four inches apart. I performed Hung Gar’s bridge set known as Wan Kiu, focusing on the Qi Gung aspect of it. Once finished, I moved back into the deep horse stance. Here, I would stay for a while.

  Bai nibbled on a pork dumpling as she took in the large facility.

  After two minutes of sitting in a quite isometric position, I finally spoke.

  “What’s new in the world, Sifu?”

  “Ah, this new rookie quarterback from the forty-niners is a bum,” he said, bitterly.

  “Who? Romano?”

  “Yeah,” said the voice from behind the newspaper.

  “He’s young. Give it time.”

  Three minutes in horse stance down.

  “The guy you played with. Chip something? He was good,” said Sifu.

  “Chip Adkins? Yeah,” I agreed. “He still is good, but San Fran thinks he’s washed up.”

  “Well, the owner and coaches need to get their heads out of their asses,” said Sifu.

  No arguments from me.

  “Hey, let me get one of those dumplings,” I said. “I’m famished.”

  “No,” said the Wizard of Canton, from behind the business section.

  I looked at Bai and mouthed the words, ‘Throw me one.’

  She looked toward Cheung Sifu, fear in her eyes, like she was going to be the next victim to get slapped on the hand.

  With a few more gestures and muted words of encouragement, I convinced her to pick one up and chuck it to me. I caught it, and in two bites, it was gone. It was delicious.

  Sifu continued to thrash through the pages of his LHK Gazette.

  Five minutes down.

  Bai seemed amazed by the current feat.

  “How long will he hold that squat?” she said.

  This time Sifu placed the paper on the table. “As long as it takes him to move past the physical threshold for pain.” He took a sip of his tea. “For Johnny, it’s around eighteen minutes.”

  “What?” was all Bai could muster. She thought about her days doing the second position plié when she was younger. She doubted she’d be able to hold the bottom position for even a minute.

  “He’s been doing the Sei Ping Ma since he was a very small boy.” Sifu took a bite of his dumpling. “Three years old.”

  Seven minutes.

  I felt my knees drifting inward a tad, so rather than just forcing them outward, I remembered Sifu’s analogy of sitting on a very large Swiss exercise ball. That thought automatically brought my knees back into proper alignment.

  I closed my eyes for what seemed like just a few moments. When I opened them again:

  Nine minutes down.

  Energy began to diminish from my legs and the golgi tendon reflex caused them to shake uncontrollably.

  Ten minutes.

  Sifu excused himself from the table and walked nonchalantly toward me. If you’d seen one ten-minute horse stance hold, you’d seen them all. With hands behind his back in parade rest, he slowly made a circle around me.

  “Very interesting,” Sifu finally said.

  Eleven minutes.

  “What is?”

  “Your friend’s name, Bai, means white or transparent in Chinese.” He stopped to side-eye her. “But she is anything but that. Very hard to read, that one,” he said, softly.

  I glanced over at Bai, who was engaged in a lighthearted conversation with one of the waitresses.

  “That’s a rarity for you,” I jabbed. I meant it, though. Sifu could normally read the hell out of most people.

  “She has suffered much trauma for such a very young life.”

  “A diamond with a flaw is worth more than a pebble without,” I said.

  “Very good,” said Sifu, smiling. “Confucius.”

  Thirteen minutes. The shaking in the legs had almost completely subsided now.

  “You have almost full control of the First Immortal,” offered Sifu, quietly. “You used your sense of smell and sight to track down the crossling two nights ago.”

  It didn’t surprise me that Sifu knew abut the crime scene chaos. The man had eyes and spies everywhere.

  “Yeah. My night vision was on crack that night. And the nose was unbelievably keen.”

  Fifteen minutes.

  “The nightmares are becoming more frequent,” said Sifu.

  “Yes.”

  “I realize you are trying to be the century at the gate between the Two Suns, Johnny, but perhaps you are on the wrong side of the gate. You would be better served boxing them in rather than waiting for them to enter this world and dealing with them here.”

  “I can’t go back.”

  “What happened to that young girl was not your fault,” said Sifu, sternly. “If you had not gotten involved, many more would have suffered the same fate.”

  “I can’t go back.”

  Sifu sighed. “You have always been so damn stubborn.”

  After seventeen minutes in the S
ei Ping Ma, something changed. My body seemed to be softening, relaxing, and rebuilding itself. Sifu seemed to sense it, too.

  “Push the energy forward,” he commanded.

  With one finger open and vertical, and the rest of my fingers closed, I exhaled and pushed my right arm into extension. I followed up with the same procedure to the opposite side

  “Now,” said Sifu, “tell me what you hear.”

  At first, it was just the commotion in the training hall, and then, shit got weird.

  I was hearing the rustling of the water from the lake outside.

  “Move your hands back and forth,” said Sifu.

  I did as I was told. It was like my pointer fingers were antennae, picking up sound vibrations within a four-mile radius.

  I could hear an older couple’s conversation in a house, but couldn’t pinpoint its whereabouts.

  Sifu told me to use the receptors in my skin to feel for temperature shifts. The warmer points would give me some sense of direction.

  After twenty-one minutes in deep horse, I collapsed to the ground.

  “Good enough for today,” said Sifu.

  I began hitting a quick series of Hindu pushups to circulate blood flow back to my upper body.

  A well-dressed middle-aged man in a suit walked up to Sifu and whispered something in his ear.

  Sifu then looked at me. “Eddie Tang and his son, Benny, from the Blue Mantis School are outside our gates. They have information that Miss Ray is here and they request a sit down with me.”

  “Shit.” I knew this wouldn’t end well. The other Triads may have respected Cheung Sifu and the Red Lotus, but they would bring violence, if they felt they were being disrespected.

  “You know what you must do, Johnny,” said Sifu.

  I swallowed hard. “I’m going to take Bai with me to the Second Sun.”

  He nodded. “Now, make your way out the back gates. Quickly.”

  Fifteen

  I HAD TO TAKE a Red Lotus company car. Having to escape out the back of Kowloon City wasn’t something I hadn’t planned for. Luck would just have to sit there until my return. I named my Mustang after Sinatra’s song: Luck Be A Lady.

  The Red Lotus and Blue Mantis organizations had an unspoken agreement for almost twenty years. Whatever the affairs were of the Blue Mantis, they would not effect the Red Lotus or the people of Kowloon City. By bringing Bai Ray to Kowloon, I almost broke that treaty. One foolish action is all it takes.